“And the cows, presumably,” pointed out Julia.
“Oh goodness,” said Emmie. “Will they fit in the White truck, do you think?”
“Take the jitney,” suggested Mrs. Rutherford.
“We’ll need somewhere to put them,” said Fran Englund briskly, managing to push back her chair and rise without rattling so much as a single cup. “I’ll see if any of the outbuildings are fit to hold them.”
“I’ll get my tools.” Anne Dawlish sprang into action, glowing with the opportunity to put her hammer and nails to use. “We’ll need to do some repairs.”
“In the dark?” said Maud.
“You can hold the lantern,” replied Fran, and Emmie, miserably, saw her exchange a small grin with Kate, and hated that Fran had been able to do what she hadn’t, to make Kate feel like one of them again.
“You’ll drive, won’t you, Kate?” Emmie said, and felt about four again, tugging at her mother’s skirt, begging her to look at her, to play with her, to be with her, feeling again that sensation of the fabric whisking away from her, her mother so impossibly far above her, always in motion, always moving away.
There was a small, awkward pause. Kate rose neatly from the table. “Of course.”
The messenger had no time for any of it. He waved them anxiously forward. “The train needs to go. If you could come now?”
It was a bumpy six miles in the dark to Nesle, with the messenger, who had slung his bicycle in the back of the jitney, guiding them through the turnings just a moment too late, so that Kate had to wrench at the wheel. It made private conversation entirely impossible. Kate focused on the road with white-knuckled concentration and Emmie clutched the side of the truck and made bright observations on the weather to which no one at all responded.
She still didn’t, quite entirely, understand what she had done wrong, only that she had, and she felt dreadful about it, with that creeping dread that comes when you know you’ve been in the wrong and have no idea how to make it right again, because you weren’t aware of having done anything wrong in the first place.
It had all been for the villagers. She had only wanted to find a way to make them comfortable.
But she couldn’t forget that horrible silence, that frozen look on Kate’s face, the way everyone had stared at Kate as though she had suddenly grown horns.
But it was nothing to be ashamed of, surely? Not here in France.
One doesn’t generally meet them, said Maud. And it was true she couldn’t think of any other Catholic girls their year. But that didn’t mean there was anything wrong with it. Except for a thousand comments she vaguely recalled hearing, about the servants and their superstitions. Although no one had called it superstitious when Auntie May had married Monsieur le Comte de Talleygord. Then it had all been “terribly romantic” and “so very medieval” and Auntie May had proudly worn a pendant that was supposed to have been blessed by some famous saint or other, but the main point about it was that it had been in the family since the Crusades and boasted a very large cabochon sapphire.
The jitney bumped over a rail, and Emmie had to cling to the seat to keep from going headfirst over the side.
The stationmaster greeted them with something between amusement and pity. Once Emmie looked into the boxcar, she wasn’t sure she blamed him. The cows looked like the beasts in the Bible who had been afflicted with pestilence, all skin and bone and covered with flies.
Kate joined her at the opening of the boxcar. “Are you sure these are the cows you intended to buy?”
“I—I took the best ones they had.” They did look awfully bony. She could have sworn they hadn’t looked this bony in Paris. Emmie bit her lip. “Maybe they’re just tired from the journey?”
“I don’t think they walked all the way.” Kate’s voice still had that dreadful flat note.
“Well, we can feed them up, and then—oh, I don’t know.” Emmie swallowed hard. They should have left this to someone better, someone more competent, someone who didn’t muddle everything she touched. “Maybe they aren’t as bad as they seem. I suppose we’ll be able to get a better look once we get them out of the boxcar?”
“First we have to get them out of the boxcar,” said Kate grimly.
Some helpful soul had inserted a plank into the opening, but the cows didn’t seem inclined to go down it, huddling together in their sodden straw. Bending over, Emmie patted her hands against her knees and called, “Here, cows! Here, cowey cows!”